The baby crises in Japan, China, and India say something huge about gender

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China, Japan, and India have a few things in common. 

They're all hugely powerful and populous Asian countries.

They also have restrictive gender roles. Put more bluntly, women and girls — at least until very recently in some urban centers — have have been second-class citizens compared to men in the best case and actively oppressed in the worst case.

As in: 

Looking at these trends from a demographic perspective, a truth emerges: oppressing women imperils a population. 

In Japan, the economic modernization of traditional society has lead to a situation where women must choose to wholly dedicate themselves to family or career, with little overlap. This has contributed to a long-declining birthrate and a "demographic time bomb" where nowhere near enough babies are being born to support an aging population. 

The preference for sons over daughters in China and India has lead to a population imbalance. There are 33 million more men in China than women, and 37 million more men than women in India. This has lead to "marriage squeeze": There aren't marriage-ready young women to go around, so there are increasing numbers of single young men. It's like dating in San Francisco, but for two countries with over a billion people each. 

Therein lies the takeaway: patriarchy, while beneficial to dudes in most ways, ends up oppressing everybody.

by Drake Baer

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